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AnonyWatch, Chapter 2: A ‘Poisonous’ President and a Banker’s Secret Yogurt

By Margaret Sullivan March 28, 2014 8:30 amMarch 28, 2014 8:30 am

Updated, 12:45 p.m.
This is the second edition of my effort to track and evaluate anonymous quotations in The Times. I’m appreciative of all the response from readers, many of whom have sent me examples that bothered them. (Others have provided worthy candidates for AnonyWatch in the comments section of my first post. To be mentioned here, for obvious reasons, readers need to provide their full names.)

There’s one point I’d like to emphasize, and that is that much of the best journalism depends on developing confidential sources who, for valid reasons, can’t go on the record. That’s not what I’m after.

I’m talking here about something else: gratuitous anonymous quotations, the kind that allow people to speculate, offer personal criticism or get a self-serving (often political) message out without taking any responsibility for it — or the kind that reporters use because quoting someone anonymously is so much easier. It’s also about attribution, and how unnamed sources of some worthwhile quotations are described in such a general way that it provides no real value to the reader.

Let’s get to it.
1. In a March 15 article about Congressional Democrats’ fear that President Obama’s sinking popularity is threatening their prospects in this year’s midterm elections, this passage appears:

“One Democratic lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Obama was becoming ‘poisonous’ to the party’s candidates. At the same time, Democrats are pressing senior aides to Mr. Obama for help from the political network.”

While the quote isn’t a personal smear, it is harsh. I think it runs up against The Times’s own admonition: “The vivid language of direct quotation confers an unfair advantage on a speaker or writer who hides behind the newspaper.”

I asked Carolyn Ryan, the Washington bureau chief, about this quote. She responded with the interesting back story behind the quote:

We always try to avoid anonymous quotes, and we certainly do not permit people to make ad hominem attacks on another individual’s character under cloak of anonymity. In this story, we were aiming for a candid assessment from Democrats about the effect the president’s unpopularity would have on Democratic chances in midterm elections.

What we found was that Democrats are increasingly alarmed about the president’s weakness in the polls and they spoke candidly to us about the drag that Mr. Obama’s standing is creating for their candidates. We have multiple on-the-record quotes capturing that anxiety. In a moment of frankness, a Democratic lawmaker (and supporter of the president) told our reporter, off-the-record, that the Obama effect was becoming poisonous to Democrats, which vividly captures the political dynamic.

The lawmaker did not want us to use the term in the story, out of fear it would be damaging further to the party, and pushed for it to remain off-the-record. The reporter pushed aggressively for it to be included in the story, on background. I think, in this case, we were correct to do so. The quote forcefully captures for the reader how worrisome the situation has become for Democrats.

Ms. Ryan makes a good case; still, I’m not quite convinced.

2. A reader, Robbie Ottley, wrote to me about a “The Working Life” column that relies almost entirely on an unnamed person, calling it “a particularly egregious example of unnecessarily granting anonymity.” The column, titled “Banks Urge Young Analysts to Do the Unthinkable: Take Weekends Off,” uses one young man’s experience as its basis, but never names him because “he was not authorized to talk to a reporter.”

Mr. Ottley’s complaint is pointed:

I was disappointed that nine paragraphs of the 19-paragraph story describe an unnamed junior investment banker who has begun to take occasional weekends off. I think there are few articles in any section of a newspaper that should rely so heavily on an unnamed source. This article seems to especially violate that principle, as it is essentially a human interest piece. Of course, as with any anonymous quote, the source’s authenticity comes into question, and readers are denied an understanding of who the source is — is he a first-year analyst at Goldman Sachs in Lower Manhattan, experiencing culture shock from his undergraduate career? Or is he in his fifth year as a teller at a Wells Fargo branch on Long Island? The article also raises the considerable question of why anonymity was granted at all. I simply can’t imagine an analyst saying he ate Greek yogurt and burgers while taking a Saturday to watch college basketball represents crucial proprietary information for any company.

I sent the reader’s complaint to the Metro editor, Wendell Jamieson. He responded by email: “The guy wouldn’t talk to us with his name and he was afraid he’d get fired if we used his name. He was talking about his own experience, not attacking someone else, so I didn’t see it as a problem.”

I’m in Mr. Ottley’s camp on this one. This hardly seems to measure up to The Times’s policy of granting anonymity only as a last resort, in instances of significant newsworthiness.

Rachel Swarns, the author of the column, added her perspective on Friday morning. Ms. Swarns noted that she is a strong believer in on-the-record quotations and sourcing, and made every effort, in this case, to write the column that way.

I contacted each of the banks that had changed their policies to discourage weekend work: None of them would allow their young bankers to speak on the record. Those banks that agreed to talk to me made it clear that it would be a violation of company policy for the young bankers to do so.

My goal was to write a column from the perspective of the young bankers whose corporate lives are changing. I did it the only way that I could, by interviewing a young man who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ms. Swarns’ explanation makes sense, but if the difficulty of getting a young banker to speak on the record was so great, then perhaps this subject was not the best choice for the column. But reasonable people can certainly disagree on that.

3. Here’s one that’s mostly amusing. In an article about The New York Observer unveiling its new design, which includes an end to printing on its signature pink paper, the story initially included this:

A person with knowledge of the decision, who declined to be named detailing internal discussions, said that the pink paper stock had grown increasingly expensive in recent years.

The paragraph was only in early online versions of the story and was edited out later. Good move.

4. Here’s an example of a front-page story in which I found anonymous quotation and sourcing valid and probably necessary. It details the efforts by militants from Al Qaeda to find a base in Syria. Interestingly, it’s by Eric Schmitt, a Washington reporter with whom I’ve had lots of discussion on this subject and who figures heavily in a column I wrote on the disconnect between readers and reporters about anonymous sources.

It was brought to my attention by a reader, Dave Metzger, on Twitter, who charged that the story, in part because of its anonymous sources, amounted to “propaganda” by the administration.

I asked Mr. Schmitt to tell me why he granted anonymity here. He responded in an email:

This was an important story and it took a couple of months to finish because I wanted to get on-record comments from US officials, given the sensitivity of the topic.

By mid-March, I had on-record comments from the three top US intelligence/counterterrorism officials: Clapper, Brennan and Olsen — all from congressional testimony. But I still needed details on how many guys were in this core Al Qaeda group of AfPak veterans who had traveled to Syria, their expertise, and anything about their organization and their suspected plotting. All very sensitive stuff, and highly classified.

I worked my sources in the intelligence, military, diplomatic and CT worlds, and got some to tell me more details — on condition that they not be identified by name because of the sensitive nature of the information.

Given that I had ample, senior on-record comment about the main thrust of the story — that core AQ was laying the groundwork in Syria for attacks against the West — I felt the tradeoff for more details was worth granting anonymity to those sources.

As Mr. Schmitt notes, most of the story is reported on the record; in one instance the use of anonymous quotation actually provides a share of skepticism about the overall premise. It’s a highly sensitive subject, and is handled well.

5. While certainly minor, I can’t resist mentioning this one: The website Smartertimes comments on what it sees as Thursday’s “Michelle Obama section,” in Styles (the first lady is mentioned in three articles). One article includes this line:

A former aide told The New Republic: “The first lady having the wrong pencil skirt” is as big a misstep (the term used was a less-publishable one) as “a policy initiative that completely failed.”

“Does the Times even know who this anonymous former aide is, or is it just taking The New Republic’s word for it?”

It’s a whole new category: Call it anonymous outsourcing.

Told about the criticism, Stuart Emmrich, the Styles editor, said in an email:

I actually think you have a valid point here, and if I had seen the edit of the Front Row column before it had gone to the desk (and then to print), I hope it would have bothered me enough to question it. Even in a light piece like this (and perhaps, more important, because it was a light piece), there is no reason to rely on an anonymous quote from another publication, especially one so sharply critical of the person being written about. Nothing would have been lost if we had just stuck to the basic premise of the piece — i.e., a look at what outfits Mrs. Obama chose to wear on this high profile trip to China — without our repeating unsourced speculation about what it is like to work for the first lady.

****************

A side note: For those who are really interested in this subject, a former Louisville journalist, Mark Schaver, has an automated feed of anonymously sourced material in The Times and other media organizations. “The tracker doesn’t have a point of view,” Mr. Schaver wrote on Twitter. “It just tries to tell you what’s there.”

And let’s give the final word to a New York reader, Paul Landaw, commenting on a story this week about New York legislators stretching their per diem allowances. It included this:

“It saves us even more money,” said the lawmaker, who insisted on anonymity because she did not want to be known as a penny-pincher.”

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Liz Spayd is the sixth public editor appointed by The New York Times. The public editor works outside of the reporting and editing structure of the newspaper and receives and answers questions or comments from readers and the public, principally about news and other coverage in The Times. Her opinions and conclusions are her own. Read more »